The Life & Times of the Chicago Thunderstorms (1977-present)

Young Drachma · 09-26-2008, 07:16 PM

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE CHICAGO THUNDERSTORMS

Preface
I'm going to simultaneously post this in the dynasty forums at OOTP and FOFC, because I figure it might be insightful for people to learn about us and if nothing else, it might be cathartic after figuring out my team over the next few years. I might just try some weird unorthodox things, because really, other than winning after a while, it gets boring doing all of that time. Especially when you run the league.

So with that, lemme get into it.

Young Drachma · 09-26-2008, 07:16 PM

INTRODUCTION
The Chicago Thunderstorms are a baseball team in the Front Office Offseason League (About the Front Office Baseball League — Front Office Offseason League), a fast-sim league using OOTP9. FOOL began in June of 2008 with OOTP8/2007 and we simmed three seasons before swapping to the new version.

We have sixteen teams all with human owners and we are the only league in the world that sims a season a week. We understand and realize that this is certifably insane and we do take breaks for holidays or whatever, but effectively FOOL is simply a league for people who are interested in playing solo, but want more of a challenge than fleecing the AI each week. With some of the most experienced and savvy owners out there, it's not a cakewalk from week to week and is quickly establishing itself as one of the most solid and competitive leagues in the OOTP universe.

The T-Storms were originally the Chicago Comets from the time the league started in 1961 until the end of the 1969 season. That year, Dark Cloud; who had just led the Compton Brothers to the doorstep of the FOOL Classic championship before losing in the 13th inning of Game 9 of the Classic to the Brooklyn Brownstones, left the cushy environs of Jackie Robinson Field in LA and headed to moribund Chicago to try to revive the worst franchise in FOOL history to that point.

The first thing he did, was give the team a new identity. He moved them three hours away to the bi-state metropolitan area of the Quad Cities and decided this would be a good way for the franchise to grow and develop. Despite a small stadium and a fan base who simply had not followed the team much, the T-Storms began their first year on the road to redemption.

The first four years reflected a resurgence.

Quote:

1973: 85-69, 3rd place RL
1972: 80-74, T-3rd, RL
1971: 83-71, 4th, RL
1970: 67-87, 6th, RL

By 1974, the team was poised to contend. And contend they did. After missing the RL pennant by just 2.5 games in '73, the T-Storms claimed their first ever Republic League Pennant in 1974, before losing in six games to the perennial champions of FOOL -- the Valdosta Peanuts -- who steamrolled to their fourth title in five years in '74.

In 1975, the T-Storms came back, armed with a new city in tow. Yearning to expand their market base, the T-Storms changed their name to the Chicago Thunderstorms in the Quad Cities. Fans understood that this was just the price of business of a big city team in a small market. But later that year, the city announced it'd build a new ballpark of the T-Storms moved that year, so they did.

They were rewarded with a championship, knocking off the Toronto Osprey, the Continental League champs in six games. Dark Cloud claimed his third FOOL Classic title and first title since 1964 when he was the GM of the St. Louis Terriers (a team that folded in 1965.)

Young Drachma · 09-26-2008, 07:16 PM

AFTER THE TITLE, COMES TURMOIL
After the title, the T-Storms had high hopes for the 1976 season. But a trade of ace Floyd Yarbrough to Texas and the signing of former Colorado Rancheros hurler Victor Gonzalez to a long-term deal, the T-Storms thought they'd reloaded for the better.

Instead, they floundered and finished two games under .500, the first time since 1970 that the team finished the year with a losing record.

With that, DC decided it was time to blow the team up. He dealt iconic player and 4-time FOOL MVP Mac Rasmusssen in a heavily derided deal to the defending CL Champion Valdosta Peanuts and instead, began attempting to bolster the team's young core of fielders with younger hurlers, having sacrificed much of their talent over the past few years to build a foundation offensively.

As the growing pains are likely to continue as the 1977 season approach tonight, this dynasty will chronicle the efforts of Dark Cloud and the Thunderstorms ascent back to the top of the FOOL standings.

Young Drachma · 09-26-2008, 07:16 PM

A FOOL PRIMER
FOOL is divided into two leagues of eight teams each:

CONTINENTAL LEAGUE
---
Atlanta Firecrackers
Baltimore Terrapins
Brooklyn Brownstones
New York Highlanders
Rio Grande Roadrunners
Texas Travelers
Toronto Osprey
Valdosta Peanuts

REPUBLIC LEAGUE
---
Chicago Thunderstorms
Colorado Rancheros
Columbus Crusaders
Compton Brothers
Hartford Harpooners
Long Island Violators
New Orleans Wrens
San Diego Fathers

The CL does not use the designated hitter, while the RL does. This schism actually happened in the 1967 season, that caused realignment in FOOL as some RL owners were opposed to it and some CL owners were in favor of it. During 1961-1963 all of the teams used the DH.

The DH was kept out of the FOOL Classic until 1970.

There are no playoffs in FOOL, though a proposal passed a few years ago calls for realignment and/or playoff expansion in 1980, there has been no definitive answer as to whether this will happen or not.

Our season gets simmed entirely in one night, usually Friday nights, in our forum. During the week, we make trades, sign players and other fun things like make up new statistics. The FOOL Classic gets simmed on Sunday nights.

Injuries are off.

Young Drachma · 09-26-2008, 08:01 PM

After the disappointment of last season, I decided it was time to rebuild. As it turned out, we were one of the youngest teams offensively last year, but one of the oldest pitching teams.

I started to jettison older players in favor of younger hurlers. We just needed pitching and I felt like we could be back in the saddle again with the club.

So I made lopsided deals to get younger in the pitching category. The replacement value on the guys I got probably wasn't worth it, but I did get us massively under the salary cap and we're now last in payroll in all of FOOL.

The cap is still at $65 million as it has been since its inception. We use real world dollars and the numbers don't inflate, so it's a standardized pool of finances and we like it that way.

The debate for me going into this season, has been deciding whether to assemble the best team of players I can to try to be respectable or try to field a team of youngsters, get them experience and see where that lands us into next year.

Being just two seasons removed from a title and knowing that a juggernaut team in Hartford is hovering over us, with the best pitching staff assembled in FOOL history, it makes sense for us to get our kids lots of playing time and to try to just do unorthodox things we'd never do, simply to see if this team has the mettle to survive in the future, rather than giving a bunch of retreads the chance to get in the way just so we win 52 games instead of 50.

So with that, I had to go through and try to assemble a lineup with the season less than two hours away.

Here is our roster as of Opening Day 1977:

Looking at our possible rotation options, I actually almost considered going with a six-man rotation this year. The idea being, mitigate the possible losses of youngsters at the bottom of the rotation, by simply using as many of these kids as possible.

Another idea I've considered is going with a six-man rotation and having two spot starters who pitch 45 percent of the time, meaning you effectively have three kids in the #6 spot in the rotation, but you've got five ride or die guys playing shotgun for you in the 1-5 spots of the rotation.

Our relief corps are nothing special, to be honest. I'm tempted to use the strategy settings, to put a long hook on my starters and effectively making them pitch themselves out of jams and going with a skeleton crew in the relief pen.

The rotation is: (how we acquired them)
1. Sam Godbout (FA)
2. Harry Mason (via trade)
3. Gabriel Riggs (via trade)
4. Micah Green (via trade)
5. Hisashi Hoshino (home grown)
6. Max Hughes (via trade/prospect, tho.)

Strange? Of course it is. But I figure that if there is a year to do this sort of wackiness, this is the year for that.

We decided to go with the unorthodox six man rotation, with two spot starters who pitch 15% of the time each. We won't have a setup man or a closer and I'm going to set our strategy to have a long hook on starters, effectively leaving the game in their hands.

Our strategy will try to play to our strengths. In some ways all of the tinkering I'm doing with this team -- although I'm sure it won't do much -- is a good opportunity for me to test the limits of my club and to figure out ways to squeeze our wins from a talent laden but VERY green ballclub.

I've set pitch counts on everyone, have gone through and even figured out the individual stealing/pinch hit settings of my offensive stars, too. I want them playing and playing a lot. I'd rather have them then a shell of themselves on the field, even if it's a lot on them.

On the offensive side, I look at our lineup and I'm actually excited about it. While it's no doubt young, the names are players who have demonstrated that they have some offensive talent and now that I've gone through and set my own lineups, I'm curious to see how they'll fare. Here are our starters and how they were originally acquired (none of the trades were this past year, just FYI)

C Cris Segura (FA)
1B Luis Mendoza
2B Rodrigo Cruz
3B Marcos Montoya
SS Jeremy Rigsby
LF Fernando Herrera
CF Theirry Fournier
RF Cheng-qian Khu
DH Bob Arnold

We have a phenom in waiting in C Holden Sims, who was a creeper who didn't initially look like a guy who would factor in, but the former 2nd round pick in 1975 looks like he could be the real deal in a year or three.

We've got a few prospects we're waiting on, which could make some of the starters this year -- especially in the outfield -- expendable. We're hoping statistically for a strong season. Our new ballpark is a pitchers haven, meaning that our guys will have to cover a lot of ground and be strong defensively.

I'll be intrigued to see what happens this year. If we win 70 games, I'll consider it a coup, but in spite of that, I'm more excited about this season than I have been in a while about any team I've run.

Young Drachma · 09-27-2008, 01:08 PM

1977 SEASON RECAP
We finished the 1977 season last night at 74-80, in sixth place but 3 games out of a tie for 4th. I'm fine with that, because we surpassed my expectations to be honest.

FINAL REGULAR SEASON STANDINGS, 1977

Code:

Continental League Standings
			W	L	PCT	GB
Valdosta Peanuts	97	57	.630	-
Baltimore Terrapins	85	69	.552	12.0
Atlanta Firecrackers	84	70	.545	13.0
Brooklyn Brownstones	80	74	.519	17.0
New York Highlanders	78	76	.506	19.0
Rio Grande Roadrunners	69	85	.448	28.0
Toronto Osprey		67	87	.435	30.0
Texas Travelers		56	98	.364	41.0

Republic League Standings
			W	L	PCT	GB
Hartford Harpooners	100	54	.649	-
Compton Brothers	82	72	.532	18.0
Colorado Rancheros	79	75	.513	21.0
Columbus Crusaders	77	77	.500	23.0
Long Island Violators	77	77	.500	23.0
Chicago Thunderstorms	74	80	.481	26.0
San Diego Fathers	66	88	.429	34.0
New Orleans Wrens	61	93	.396	39.0

I planned to jettison the 6-man rotation, but forgot to push 5-man rotation instead of 6-man rotation and as a result, the season ran with a 6-man using the spot starter as the 6th guy.

It wasn't as terrible as I would've expected. 25-year old rookie Max Hughes went 11-11, with 4.99 ERA as the 6th starter and while his VORP was negative, he wasn't really intended to be the option there and so, I'm fine with that.

Sam Godbout went 12-8 with 3.64 ERA in 26 starts and the real sad thing is I wish I could've gotten him the ball more, because I think he'd have been more effective. I hate wasting "effective good years" of a player, but at least I have good players to waste, right?

Our lineup was the youngest in FOOL this past year, with an average age of 24.5 and I'm fine with that. We're still en route to finding the sort of pitching that could complement it and start to be contenders again, but squeezing close to .500 record was impressive to me, given that it wasn't a forgone conclusion at the start of the year and we probably should've been worse.

TEAM BATTING, 1977

Code:

Pos	Player			Age	G	GS	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	VORP
DH	*Bob Arnold		27	128	119	472	73	152	28	7	21	79	2	5	31	102	.322	.361	.544	.905	46.9
2B	#Rodrigo Cruz		26	154	154	547	69	135	16	3	16	68	6	9	37	88	.247	.295	.375	.669	-5.7
CF	Thierry Fournier	25	154	154	605	126	173	26	9	18	45	87	21	69	118	.286	.359	.448	.807	47.6
1B	Dustin Gaines		20	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.000	.000	.000	.000	0.0
RF	Josh Harris		19	10	0	1	1	1	0	1	0	1	0	0	1	0	1.000	1.000	3.000	4.000	0.0
LF	Fernando Herrera	23	144	144	505	60	131	35	8	18	97	3	1	41	123	.259	.310	.467	.777	18.1
RF	*Cheng-qian Khu		24	154	154	554	67	162	43	3	16	78	0	0	43	27	.292	.352	.468	.819	32.4
DH	Glen McKay		20	50	45	148	20	32	9	1	6	15	0	1	12	52	.216	.273	.412	.685	-4.6
1B	*Luis Mendoza		29	154	154	570	84	158	23	0	21	92	1	0	57	84	.277	.349	.428	.777	22.0
3B	*Marcos Montoya		25	154	154	554	83	151	29	9	23	82	11	11	38	79	.273	.318	.482	.800	29.2
SS	*Jeremy Rigsby		21	154	154	545	83	175	22	10	11	68	50	21	53	79	.321	.387	.459	.846	48.6
1B	Cris Segura		35	43	0	16	12	6	0	1	1	5	1	0	0	4	.375	.375	.688	1.063	2.7
C	Holden Sims		24	154	154	512	57	101	35	2	15	58	0	0	42	197	.197	.270	.361	.631	-9.9
 	Team Totals		24.5	1454	1386	5029	735	1377	266	54	166	688	161	69	424	953	.274	.333	.447	.780	227.3

TEAM PITCHING STATS, 1977

Code:

Team Pitching Stats
Player			Age	W	L	Pct	G	GS	SV	IP	H	ER	HR	BB	SO	ERA	VORP
Bill Bayer		25	1	0	1.000	9	0	1	24.2	26	9	2	10	13	3.28	3.3
Derek Chandler		35	0	0	0.000	21	0	6	28.2	28	15	2	14	18	4.71	-1.9
Samuel Godbout		26	12	8	0.600	26	26	0	203.0	196	82	25	66	189	3.64	16.1
Micah Green		23	7	8	0.467	26	26	0	166.1	197	81	21	32	121	4.38	-4.2
Hisashi Hoshino		31	8	10	0.444	25	25	0	165.2	192	94	26	36	97	5.11	-20.0
Max Hughes		25	11	11	0.500	27	25	0	167.2	197	93	23	52	84	4.99	-17.6
Kevin King		31	9	7	0.563	75	0	13	105.1	99	41	11	36	101	3.50	10.0
Harry Mason		33	6	13	0.316	26	26	0	199.1	214	102	23	62	150	4.61	-10.9
Manuel Montaño		35	0	1	0.000	9	0	2	8.1	13	4	0	6	5	4.32	-0.0
Gabriel Riggs		30	9	12	0.429	26	26	0	161.1	169	73	14	55	136	4.07	2.8
Pedro Silva		23	5	4	0.556	72	0	14	104.0	124	48	4	25	65	4.15	0.6
John Tame		25	6	6	0.500	41	0	5	54.0	53	18	4	21	34	3.00	8.8
Team Totals		28.5	74	80	0.481	383	154	41	1388.1	1508	660	155	415	1013	4.28	-12.9

This tells an obvious story. Until we got out and get some reliable, battle tested, top tier pitching arms, we're going to continue to languish. I'm not sure if the trades I made to deal some of my better acquired pitching was really all that smart. I mean, it's possible. But I'm not really sure that we managed to improve the team for the long term with my most recent moves.

I think we probably saved ourselves some major salary cap issues and were smart to try to get some value for guys who would've been good but wouldn't have taken us to a title. But trading Gonzalez to Compton was probably a misstep, though in the end, we effectively made deals that completed the Mac Rasmussen trade that was still incomplete from years ago when we got him from Hartford.

We dealt him for future picks, but once future picks trading was outlawed, Hartford was screwed and came looking for us to pay up. At least that's out of the way now and we didn't give up anything so devastating that it'll hurt us forever and ultimately, that was a deal that build our title run and now we sent Yarbrough to them in the off-season (via Texas) and they won the RL pennant this year.

They'll face off against Valdosta, who have won the Continental League pennant for the sixth time in eight years. Hartford is favored, just as Columbus was last year. But Columbus ended up getting taken to 9 games before winning it late. Hartford has the best pitching staff we've seen in this league in well over a decade, so really, they ought to steamroll. But Valdosta is the best TEAM I've ever seen in a sim league.

They just are well managed and know how to do what they do, very very well.

We'll evaluate what's out there and see if we can make some deals to bring in some real strong pitching. Trading prospects is always hard. But no point in having prospects if you have to wait for them and know you'll not win with what you have without getting quality now. So now that I have a farm system that's actually got a few pieces, I'm gonna see what we can go out there and pick up to try to make our team better.

We're probably still 2-3 years away from being a strong contender in the Republic League again. But given that we've moved into our new stadium and have learned how to be successful with the guys we have, I'm confident that we can be a factor sooner rather than later.

We've got the best young offensive core in the entire league, so really, if we get them some help, I see no reason we can't dominate.

Young Drachma · 10-01-2008, 02:06 PM

What do you do when it's time to complete end an era? I didn't even realize that it'd been almost eight seasons since I took over this Chicago franchise until I started looking at the players on my squad and started to realize that these guys had been with me since literally my first season.

I didn't think I was getting attached, but our decline in the standings signaled to me that I was getting a lot more attached than I realized. That it was it was time to make a change that could ultimately affect the club and take us from the middle tier to closer to the top.

So that meant it was time to make some moves.

Painful ones, but moves nonetheless. I think the result of what we'd come out with will be such that we'll be in a much better place after this coming season, than we've been in recent years.

Our real issues are a lack of offense, more than even a lack of pitching. We needed to get help in the rotation, to be sure.

Now how we accomplish that, is anyone's guess. But once this off-season ends, I'll be able to relay how we went about rectifying our issues and hopefully, showing after Friday night whether those were enough moves to put us into contention or whether it was a foolhardy exercise.

09-26-2008, 08:01 PM	#5
Young Drachma Dark Cloud Join Date: Apr 2001	After the disappointment of last season, I decided it was time to rebuild. As it turned out, we were one of the youngest teams offensively last year, but one of the oldest pitching teams. I started to jettison older players in favor of younger hurlers. We just needed pitching and I felt like we could be back in the saddle again with the club. So I made lopsided deals to get younger in the pitching category. The replacement value on the guys I got probably wasn't worth it, but I did get us massively under the salary cap and we're now last in payroll in all of FOOL. The cap is still at $65 million as it has been since its inception. We use real world dollars and the numbers don't inflate, so it's a standardized pool of finances and we like it that way. The debate for me going into this season, has been deciding whether to assemble the best team of players I can to try to be respectable or try to field a team of youngsters, get them experience and see where that lands us into next year. Being just two seasons removed from a title and knowing that a juggernaut team in Hartford is hovering over us, with the best pitching staff assembled in FOOL history, it makes sense for us to get our kids lots of playing time and to try to just do unorthodox things we'd never do, simply to see if this team has the mettle to survive in the future, rather than giving a bunch of retreads the chance to get in the way just so we win 52 games instead of 50. So with that, I had to go through and try to assemble a lineup with the season less than two hours away. Here is our roster as of Opening Day 1977: Looking at our possible rotation options, I actually almost considered going with a six-man rotation this year. The idea being, mitigate the possible losses of youngsters at the bottom of the rotation, by simply using as many of these kids as possible. Another idea I've considered is going with a six-man rotation and having two spot starters who pitch 45 percent of the time, meaning you effectively have three kids in the #6 spot in the rotation, but you've got five ride or die guys playing shotgun for you in the 1-5 spots of the rotation. Our relief corps are nothing special, to be honest. I'm tempted to use the strategy settings, to put a long hook on my starters and effectively making them pitch themselves out of jams and going with a skeleton crew in the relief pen. The rotation is: (how we acquired them) 1. Sam Godbout (FA) 2. Harry Mason (via trade) 3. Gabriel Riggs (via trade) 4. Micah Green (via trade) 5. Hisashi Hoshino (home grown) 6. Max Hughes (via trade/prospect, tho.) Strange? Of course it is. But I figure that if there is a year to do this sort of wackiness, this is the year for that. We decided to go with the unorthodox six man rotation, with two spot starters who pitch 15% of the time each. We won't have a setup man or a closer and I'm going to set our strategy to have a long hook on starters, effectively leaving the game in their hands. Our strategy will try to play to our strengths. In some ways all of the tinkering I'm doing with this team -- although I'm sure it won't do much -- is a good opportunity for me to test the limits of my club and to figure out ways to squeeze our wins from a talent laden but VERY green ballclub. I've set pitch counts on everyone, have gone through and even figured out the individual stealing/pinch hit settings of my offensive stars, too. I want them playing and playing a lot. I'd rather have them then a shell of themselves on the field, even if it's a lot on them. On the offensive side, I look at our lineup and I'm actually excited about it. While it's no doubt young, the names are players who have demonstrated that they have some offensive talent and now that I've gone through and set my own lineups, I'm curious to see how they'll fare. Here are our starters and how they were originally acquired (none of the trades were this past year, just FYI) C Cris Segura (FA) 1B Luis Mendoza 2B Rodrigo Cruz 3B Marcos Montoya SS Jeremy Rigsby LF Fernando Herrera CF Theirry Fournier RF Cheng-qian Khu DH Bob Arnold We have a phenom in waiting in C Holden Sims, who was a creeper who didn't initially look like a guy who would factor in, but the former 2nd round pick in 1975 looks like he could be the real deal in a year or three. We've got a few prospects we're waiting on, which could make some of the starters this year -- especially in the outfield -- expendable. We're hoping statistically for a strong season. Our new ballpark is a pitchers haven, meaning that our guys will have to cover a lot of ground and be strong defensively. I'll be intrigued to see what happens this year. If we win 70 games, I'll consider it a coup, but in spite of that, I'm more excited about this season than I have been in a while about any team I've run. Last edited by Young Drachma : 09-27-2008 at 03:03 AM.

09-26-2008, 07:16 PM	#3
Young Drachma Dark Cloud Join Date: Apr 2001	AFTER THE TITLE, COMES TURMOIL After the title, the T-Storms had high hopes for the 1976 season. But a trade of ace Floyd Yarbrough to Texas and the signing of former Colorado Rancheros hurler Victor Gonzalez to a long-term deal, the T-Storms thought they'd reloaded for the better. Instead, they floundered and finished two games under .500, the first time since 1970 that the team finished the year with a losing record. With that, DC decided it was time to blow the team up. He dealt iconic player and 4-time FOOL MVP Mac Rasmusssen in a heavily derided deal to the defending CL Champion Valdosta Peanuts and instead, began attempting to bolster the team's young core of fielders with younger hurlers, having sacrificed much of their talent over the past few years to build a foundation offensively. As the growing pains are likely to continue as the 1977 season approach tonight, this dynasty will chronicle the efforts of Dark Cloud and the Thunderstorms ascent back to the top of the FOOL standings.

09-27-2008, 01:08 PM	#6
Young Drachma Dark Cloud Join Date: Apr 2001	1977 SEASON RECAP We finished the 1977 season last night at 74-80, in sixth place but 3 games out of a tie for 4th. I'm fine with that, because we surpassed my expectations to be honest. FINAL REGULAR SEASON STANDINGS, 1977 Code: Continental League Standings W L PCT GB Valdosta Peanuts 97 57 .630 - Baltimore Terrapins 85 69 .552 12.0 Atlanta Firecrackers 84 70 .545 13.0 Brooklyn Brownstones 80 74 .519 17.0 New York Highlanders 78 76 .506 19.0 Rio Grande Roadrunners 69 85 .448 28.0 Toronto Osprey 67 87 .435 30.0 Texas Travelers 56 98 .364 41.0 Republic League Standings W L PCT GB Hartford Harpooners 100 54 .649 - Compton Brothers 82 72 .532 18.0 Colorado Rancheros 79 75 .513 21.0 Columbus Crusaders 77 77 .500 23.0 Long Island Violators 77 77 .500 23.0 Chicago Thunderstorms 74 80 .481 26.0 San Diego Fathers 66 88 .429 34.0 New Orleans Wrens 61 93 .396 39.0 I planned to jettison the 6-man rotation, but forgot to push 5-man rotation instead of 6-man rotation and as a result, the season ran with a 6-man using the spot starter as the 6th guy. It wasn't as terrible as I would've expected. 25-year old rookie Max Hughes went 11-11, with 4.99 ERA as the 6th starter and while his VORP was negative, he wasn't really intended to be the option there and so, I'm fine with that. Sam Godbout went 12-8 with 3.64 ERA in 26 starts and the real sad thing is I wish I could've gotten him the ball more, because I think he'd have been more effective. I hate wasting "effective good years" of a player, but at least I have good players to waste, right? Our lineup was the youngest in FOOL this past year, with an average age of 24.5 and I'm fine with that. We're still en route to finding the sort of pitching that could complement it and start to be contenders again, but squeezing close to .500 record was impressive to me, given that it wasn't a forgone conclusion at the start of the year and we probably should've been worse. TEAM BATTING, 1977 Code: Pos Player Age G GS AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO AVG OBP SLG OPS VORP DH Bob Arnold 27 128 119 472 73 152 28 7 21 79 2 5 31 102 .322 .361 .544 .905 46.9 2B #Rodrigo Cruz 26 154 154 547 69 135 16 3 16 68 6 9 37 88 .247 .295 .375 .669 -5.7 CF Thierry Fournier 25 154 154 605 126 173 26 9 18 45 87 21 69 118 .286 .359 .448 .807 47.6 1B Dustin Gaines 20 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .000 .000 .000 .000 0.0 RF Josh Harris 19 10 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1.000 1.000 3.000 4.000 0.0 LF Fernando Herrera 23 144 144 505 60 131 35 8 18 97 3 1 41 123 .259 .310 .467 .777 18.1 RF Cheng-qian Khu 24 154 154 554 67 162 43 3 16 78 0 0 43 27 .292 .352 .468 .819 32.4 DH Glen McKay 20 50 45 148 20 32 9 1 6 15 0 1 12 52 .216 .273 .412 .685 -4.6 1B Luis Mendoza 29 154 154 570 84 158 23 0 21 92 1 0 57 84 .277 .349 .428 .777 22.0 3B Marcos Montoya 25 154 154 554 83 151 29 9 23 82 11 11 38 79 .273 .318 .482 .800 29.2 SS *Jeremy Rigsby 21 154 154 545 83 175 22 10 11 68 50 21 53 79 .321 .387 .459 .846 48.6 1B Cris Segura 35 43 0 16 12 6 0 1 1 5 1 0 0 4 .375 .375 .688 1.063 2.7 C Holden Sims 24 154 154 512 57 101 35 2 15 58 0 0 42 197 .197 .270 .361 .631 -9.9 Team Totals 24.5 1454 1386 5029 735 1377 266 54 166 688 161 69 424 953 .274 .333 .447 .780 227.3 TEAM PITCHING STATS, 1977 Code: Team Pitching Stats Player Age W L Pct G GS SV IP H ER HR BB SO ERA VORP Bill Bayer 25 1 0 1.000 9 0 1 24.2 26 9 2 10 13 3.28 3.3 Derek Chandler 35 0 0 0.000 21 0 6 28.2 28 15 2 14 18 4.71 -1.9 Samuel Godbout 26 12 8 0.600 26 26 0 203.0 196 82 25 66 189 3.64 16.1 Micah Green 23 7 8 0.467 26 26 0 166.1 197 81 21 32 121 4.38 -4.2 Hisashi Hoshino 31 8 10 0.444 25 25 0 165.2 192 94 26 36 97 5.11 -20.0 Max Hughes 25 11 11 0.500 27 25 0 167.2 197 93 23 52 84 4.99 -17.6 Kevin King 31 9 7 0.563 75 0 13 105.1 99 41 11 36 101 3.50 10.0 Harry Mason 33 6 13 0.316 26 26 0 199.1 214 102 23 62 150 4.61 -10.9 Manuel Montaño 35 0 1 0.000 9 0 2 8.1 13 4 0 6 5 4.32 -0.0 Gabriel Riggs 30 9 12 0.429 26 26 0 161.1 169 73 14 55 136 4.07 2.8 Pedro Silva 23 5 4 0.556 72 0 14 104.0 124 48 4 25 65 4.15 0.6 John Tame 25 6 6 0.500 41 0 5 54.0 53 18 4 21 34 3.00 8.8 Team Totals 28.5 74 80 0.481 383 154 41 1388.1 1508 660 155 415 1013 4.28 -12.9 This tells an obvious story. Until we got out and get some reliable, battle tested, top tier pitching arms, we're going to continue to languish. I'm not sure if the trades I made to deal some of my better acquired pitching was really all that smart. I mean, it's possible. But I'm not really sure that we managed to improve the team for the long term with my most recent moves. I think we probably saved ourselves some major salary cap issues and were smart to try to get some value for guys who would've been good but wouldn't have taken us to a title. But trading Gonzalez to Compton was probably a misstep, though in the end, we effectively made deals that completed the Mac Rasmussen trade that was still incomplete from years ago when we got him from Hartford. We dealt him for future picks, but once future picks trading was outlawed, Hartford was screwed and came looking for us to pay up. At least that's out of the way now and we didn't give up anything so devastating that it'll hurt us forever and ultimately, that was a deal that build our title run and now we sent Yarbrough to them in the off-season (via Texas) and they won the RL pennant this year. They'll face off against Valdosta, who have won the Continental League pennant for the sixth time in eight years. Hartford is favored, just as Columbus was last year. But Columbus ended up getting taken to 9 games before winning it late. Hartford has the best pitching staff we've seen in this league in well over a decade, so really, they ought to steamroll. But Valdosta is the best TEAM I've ever seen in a sim league. They just are well managed and know how to do what they do, very very well. We'll evaluate what's out there and see if we can make some deals to bring in some real strong pitching. Trading prospects is always hard. But no point in having prospects if you have to wait for them and know you'll not win with what you have without getting quality now. So now that I have a farm system that's actually got a few pieces, I'm gonna see what we can go out there and pick up to try to make our team better. We're probably still 2-3 years away from being a strong contender in the Republic League again. But given that we've moved into our new stadium and have learned how to be successful with the guys we have, I'm confident that we can be a factor sooner rather than later. We've got the best young offensive core in the entire league, so really, if we get them some help, I see no reason we can't dominate.

10-01-2008, 02:06 PM	#7
Young Drachma Dark Cloud Join Date: Apr 2001	What do you do when it's time to complete end an era? I didn't even realize that it'd been almost eight seasons since I took over this Chicago franchise until I started looking at the players on my squad and started to realize that these guys had been with me since literally my first season. I didn't think I was getting attached, but our decline in the standings signaled to me that I was getting a lot more attached than I realized. That it was it was time to make a change that could ultimately affect the club and take us from the middle tier to closer to the top. So that meant it was time to make some moves. Painful ones, but moves nonetheless. I think the result of what we'd come out with will be such that we'll be in a much better place after this coming season, than we've been in recent years. Our real issues are a lack of offense, more than even a lack of pitching. We needed to get help in the rotation, to be sure. Now how we accomplish that, is anyone's guess. But once this off-season ends, I'll be able to relay how we went about rectifying our issues and hopefully, showing after Friday night whether those were enough moves to put us into contention or whether it was a foolhardy exercise.

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